Review/Summary: ‘Rick and Morty’ Season 3, Episode 8

By Nate Fields

“Morty’s Mind Blowers” is the eighth episode in Season 3 of Rick and Morty. The episode begins with Rick and Morty in the midst of another adventure in which they capture the Truth Tortoise. Morty looks into the Truth Tortoise’s eyes seconds before Rick tells him to make sure he doesn’t do that. Turns out if you look at the Truth Tortoise you know everything. As he looks into the tortoise’s eyes it says something to him, which after a little research (not real research, just YouTube) I found out it says “I am a Beatle, Paul is dead,” referencing a Beatles conspiracy theory, but that’s a story for another day.

After being driven crazy by looking at the Tortoise, Morty starts to say he wants the preceding events erased from his memory but Rick completes the sentence for him, sparking Morty’s curiosity as to how he knew that’s what he was going to say. Rick then takes Morty into the garage and into a secret room filled with a chair and color-coded memory storage banks. Rick calls these erased memories “Morty’s Mind Blowers” and informs the audience that they’ll be doing this plot instead of “Interdimensional Cable” (bummer).

Rick sits Morty down and lets him experience many of the memories he has since forgotten. After Morty relives these memories, a couple of which result in Morty being responsible for some deaths, he begins to realize that the colors of each memory vile indicates who is responsible for Morty’s mind being blown.

When he experiences the red memories he realizes these are memories Rick wanted to remove involuntarily – usually because of a mistake Rick made during an adventure, such as saying they’ve taken things “for granite” instead of “granted” – he becomes unhinged. After a brief fight both Rick and Morty end up getting their memories erased. When they awake, neither of them has any recollection of who they are. Morty begins trying to piece together everything by playing countless memories, which leads to Morty being skeptical of Rick because he realizes Rick is essentially controlling what he remembers.

After Morty has seen enough he grabs Rick’s gun and puts it to his head, saying there’s no point of being alive if all of his memories just end up bottled up in the room. Rick agrees and they begin to form a suicide pact, but just before they pull the triggers, Summer walks in. She asks if they’re doing “Morty’s Mind Blowers,” and when Rick asks who she is she realizes it’s a “Scenario 4” and tranquilizes both of them before restoring their memories. As a cover, she places them on the couch so they will think they had fallen asleep during “Interdimensional Cable.” They awake and proceed to cuss her out before leaving for a “classic Rick and Morty adventure.”

After the credits roll, Jerry strolls into the garage and finds “Jerry’s Mind Blowers,” and we find out Jerry is responsible for the death of an alien.

The episode doesn’t advance much of the plot that has been building around Beth and Jerry’s divorce in previous episodes, but it does paint a good picture of how much of a terrible person Rick can be. It gives the audience an idea of how much control he has over Morty, being able to erase basically anything he wants from Morty’s memory. The main thing it made me wonder is if Morty would go on all of these adventures with Rick if he knew how manipulative he really is. Rick doesn’t necessarily deny the fact that he’s an ***hole, but to take it to the extent of erasing every memory of any miscalculation or embarrassing moment Morty witnesses is a new level of crazy. You get an idea of what Morty’s reaction would be when he pieces everything together and realizes what Rick has been doing: he is livid. I thought this episode was great for putting into perspective how controlling Rick can be toward Morty, making him more of a pawn than a sidekick, and that’s something we can’t take for granite.